Jim Tracy adds Harwell, Casada to leadership team

House Speaker Beth Harwell, Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada and the rest of the GOP leadership in the state House of Representatives is backing Jim Tracy’s bid for Congress, the state senator’s campaign said Tuesday in a message to supporters.

Harwell, Casada, House Republican Leader Gerald McCormick and Speaker Pro Tempore Curtis Johnson join a long list of top Republicans that have thrown their support behind Tracy, R-Shelbyville. He faces U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais, R-South Pittsburg.

Their endorsements have come unusually early — months before the August primary — but Republican leaders largely have shunned DesJarlais following the 2012 release of records from his divorce a decade prior. Those records showed that the anti-abortion DesJarlais had dated two patients while still married to his first wife, prescribed pain medication to one of those women, urged the other to have an abortion when she told him he was pregnant and supported his ex-wife’s decision to abort two pregnancies before their split.